The response of Jacob Zuma, the South African president, to the torrid welcome he received from the British press this week, focusing as it did on polygamy, adultery and serial procreation, was pretty much standard form for a post-colonial African leader. He accused us of cultural imperialism and blamed it on Britain's colonial past.

This reflected a long-running and quaintly ambiguous relationship which Africa's leaders have held with Britain since we began our withdrawal from the African colonies in the late 1950s. Thus Robert Mugabe, for example, continues to favour Savile Row suits, loves cricket, and only this week appeared to endorse David Cameron and the Conservatives in our forthcoming elections, while constantly denouncing Britain as the architect of all of Africa's woes.

So, for all his discomfort at what he perceived as racist and culturalist insults, and the implication that polygamy is a euphemism for primitivism, Mr Zuma clearly wallowed in his two-night sleepover at Buckingham Palace, the carriage rides around the capital with our ever-gracious Queen, the pomp and ceremony of the state banquet, and the attentions of our Prime Minister and his Government.

At the same time we are told African leaders such as Mr Zuma are so fed up with our cultural imperialism that they are turning to the Chinese as trade partners. Isolated by sanctions from many Western countries, the Mugabe regime has for the past few years become increasingly dependent on China, and it is reported that last year China emerged as South Africa's foremost trading partner. However, there remain fears that in the long term Africa may yet find that the Chinese will be the greater beneficiaries of this marriage and, as one southern African NGO told me this week, "We could well look back on British colonialism as the golden age of Africa."

He may have a point. On hearing Mr Zuma's complaints, I was reminded of the wonderful Monty Python sketch that begins with the line: "What have the Romans done for us?" Even the despot Mugabe, when taking the reins of Zimbabwe from his hated predecessor, Ian Smith, in 1980, admitted to Mr Smith that he and his people owed a lot to the white colonials who had hacked civilisation out of raw bushveld in under a century. He promised to look after this "jewel of Africa" but instead trashed everything the white colonials had built up, most notably a thriving agricultural sector that was the envy of the rest of Africa.

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The European colonials gave Africa efficient and comparatively honest civil services, a vision and a work ethic that saw the construction of road and rail networks, modern harbours and airports, and education systems based on European standards.

At the same time they also took advantage of the indigenous people, in apartheid South Africa more than anywhere else. However, the same exploitation of the lower orders continues apace in post-colonial Africa and there is no sign that the gap between rich and poor in South Africa is narrowing. In fact, South Africa's stability and prosperity over the next decade may well depend more on contributions from the so-called cultural imperialists than on the more colourful but less effective offerings of Mr Zuma's cultural peers, the Zulus.

Now Mr Zuma will be returning to South Africa to face even harsher critics than he has had to endure on this state visit. His own ruling party, the African National Congress, is more divided and fractious than it has ever been, with the ANC Youth League, headed by the incendiary and allegedly spectacularly corrupt Julius Malema, leading the chorus. There is a strong feeling inside the ANC that instead of shifting economic philosophy from the pragmatic capitalism of the Mbeki era to a more inclusive African socialist model, Zuma's government has barely moved and is failing to address the increasingly strident cries of the masses.

The most consistent criticism of Mr Zuma in his first year in office is that he is all things to all men, that he will agree with the person standing in front of him at the time. The trade unions, which were his power base when he sought the presidency, feel he has abandoned the working class in favour of big business. Meanwhile, the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) accuses Zuma and the ANC of "pure and simple abuse of power".

Helen Zille, the Democratic Alliance's leader, who has faced death threats and been called "a filthy whore" and "an exponent of a new apartheid" by the ANC Youth League, claims that the ANC under Zuma "has squandered what we believe to be in excess of a billion rands [£70 million] on perks; money spent on grace-and-favour homes for cabinet minsters' wives and families, Range Rovers, town and country cars for them in Pretoria and Cape Town."

Zille says that "many of Zuma's actions demonstrate the ANC's belief that there is one law for themselves, and another for the rest of South Africa."

For the moment, South Africa's economy is holding its own, recording respectable growth and buoyed by a well-organised banking system that has been successive ANC governments' greatest achievement. With this year's football World Cup expected to pump a further £4 billion into the economy, one would expect the mood in the country to be one of mild elation, but it is not. Even Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace prize winner, South Africa's moral standard-bearer and all-round optimist, has said, "We are at a bad place right now in our country."

Visitors who travel beyond the vineyards of the Western Cape and move outside the glittering skyscrapers of the country's urban areas will notice decay and squalor on the margins. The failure to deliver basic local community services such as clean water, sanitation and electricity has led to serious social unrest, with the police bringing out the riot squads and using rubber bullets on protesters. Added to which, the warning from Eskom, the national electricity supply commission, that it will be raising electricity charges by 25 per cent in the coming years has led the trade union movement Cosatu to threaten a national strike.

As Barney Mthombothi, editor of South Africa's Financial Mail, says, "travelling around the country, one cannot but be shocked at the state of some of our towns and cities – a general state of neglect and decay. It's as if nobody is in charge."

Then there are the violent undercurrents that have always been part of South African society but now seem to have intensified with the dramatic population increase and growth of squatter settlements around all the major cities. Add to that the incidence of farm murders, in which more than 2,000 (some say the figure is 3,000) white farmers in remote parts of the country have been killed, and there is constant talk about white exodus. Since the country's first democratic elections in 1994, approximately 750,000 white South Africans - out of a total white population of four million - are reported to have left the country and settled abroad. With them have gone the skills that are essential to a developing country, and there is now a shortage of skilled engineers and medical practitioners.

Nobody's blaming the president for all of this but many feel the time for decisive, visionary leadership - not complaints about cultural imperialism - is now. As one South African businessman said to me this week: "We desperately need a politician of Mandela's stature to take us through this gathering storm. But there is no-one in sight."